# Toilet seat heights in Amsterdam

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2022-05-04

amsterdam, architecture, architecture-school, design, funny-post, matthew-rolston, photographer, toilet-heights, toilet-seats, travel, uncategorized

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/3bd5cad2583772cf16c360696a81e2b1.jpg)

I am in Amsterdam right now for the very first time. And after I took in [all the bicycles](https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1521886896758173697?s=21&t=ng-B7-thFOVIr42GF20m1Q), the beautifully tilting buildings, and its iconic canals, the first thing that struck me was — get this — the height of its toilet seats.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a reasonably tall guy. So it’s not that the bowl in my hotel room isn’t comfortable or anything like that. It actually feels quite luxurious. I just know that this thing has got to be taller than your average bowl.

A typical toilet seat height can be anywhere from 15 to 19” when measuring from the floor to the top of the seat. But I think 17-19” is the most typical range. So how much taller is my Dutch bowl?

Sadly, I forgot to pack my tape measure on this trip. So I instead used the tallest book I could find in the room as a measuring stick. It happenend to be the above book by Hollywood photographer [Matthew Rolston](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Rolston).

Matthew’s book is 36cm tall and so, by using everything I ever learned in architecture school, I am now fairly confident that my seat is currently sitting at around 21-22” off the ground.

Dutch people are tall. And so too are the bowls, it would seem.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/toilet-seat-heights-in-amsterdam)*